STEM Mentoring Café

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The STEM Mentoring Café (Café) is a speed-mentoring program aimed at inspiring historically underrepresented and underserved populations in STEM fields to consider STEM disciplines by engaging students in interactive demonstrations, and show-and-tell chats with STEM role models about their careers. The STEM professionals move from table-to-table to share how they got their start in STEM, what interests them the most about their job, what exciting projects they are currently working on, and why STEM matters to our society. Educators are given take-home material to continue STEM engagement with students, while STEM professionals are encouraged to serve additional time as a mentor to students in their community. The Café small group setting encourages conversation and connectivity.

PAST EVENTS

April 8, 2017 Iowa STEM Mentoring Cafe at the Science Center of Iowa. In partnership with the Department of Energy's Ames National Laboratory and the Science Center of Iowa, students and educators from the Science Bound program engaged with more than 15 STEM professionals, Pictures to follow.

November 14, 2015, New York City, New York, at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, 130 middle school students and STEM mentors engaged in one of our biggest Cafés to date. Read our blog post on the event.

October 27, 2015, Anchorage, Alaska, at the Anchorage Museum. Over 100 middle school students, representing at minimum 18 different schools and afterschool programs, and more than 20 STEM professionals were in attendance. Fields of specialization had a distinctly Alaskan flavor. For more details read the blog post written by the museum.

April 22, 2015, Richland, Washington at the REACH museum. At this event, 17 STEM professionals from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and industry professionals served as mentors for 100 middle school students from the Tri-Cities area. Dot Harris, Director of the Office of Economic Impact and Diversity, delivered keynote remarks. Watch our highlight video.

The first STEM Mentoring Café was held on May 19, 2014, at the Department of Education and co-hosted by the Department of Energy. Thirty female federal employees from seven agencies mentored eighteen teachers and nearly forty students in Washington, D.C. Read our blog post from the event.

HOW CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT THE STEM MENTORING CAFE?

The Department of Energy is working with its National Laboratories and the Association of Science-Technology Centers in selecting the locations for the 2017 STEM Mentoring Cafe series. Additional requests to host an event or learn more may be sent to STEMED@energy.gov.

MORE RESOURCES

Are you interested in becoming a mentor or role model? Brush up on some role model training to develop more skills to engage underrepresented individuals in STEM. Check out our training series launched in August 2015 to help give you resources and best practices for engaging with youth.